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Category: Issues

Good Value Wine Part II: Better Options As far as finding that “good deal” is concerned, once you move away from sales and discounters, things start to get a lot more interesting, a bit more complicated – and much more fun. Buy Local – Direct is Best This is, obviously, an easier option if you […]

Good Value Wine If you want to find “good value” in the wine world, how easy is it? How much do you need to know about wine? Is it possible to get “good” wine at a supermarket, or even at a hard discounter like Aldi or Lidl? Well. Defining “good value” is almost as difficult […]

Solera You may have encountered this word before. If you drink Sherry or Spanish Brandy, you almost certainly have. But what does it mean? Let us first get some possible confusion out of the way. “Solera” is not to be confused with “Solaris”, which is both 1: a disease-resistant grape variety first created in Freiburg […]

Wine Myths, Misconceptions and Misinformation #3: Old Vines Make Better Wine Nearly everybody knows that “old vines” make better wine. If you didn’t know that before, you heard it here first. But is it true? The answer is, unfortunately, a very qualified “yes and no”. Come now, if it had been a straightforward answer you […]

Coravin Test Round 3 – The Vintage Needle Now this was exciting. Coravin has, in their arsenal, a smaller-bore needle that is specially-designed for use with “older” wines. The corks of said wines are more likely to have lost some of their resiliency, and the wines themselves are perhaps more delicate than younger versions, requiring […]

The Obstacles for Natural Wines Before I launch into a long, nasty tirade about this very misunderstood area of wine, indulge me for a moment and permit me to say that I think the premise of “natural” wines is likely the most appealing of all the possibilities open to us for winemaking and viticulture: wines […]

Coravin Test Round Two – Three Reds For Round Two of the Coravin Test, I chose three fairly different red wines: a beautifully clean, organic Swiss wine from the Lavaux region at Lake Geneva, made with a relatively new hybrid called Diolinoir; an unusual, non-vintage, multi-state American blend; and a raspy, biodynamic Monastrell from the […]

Coravin Test Round One – a Couple of Whites So I started things off with a challenge! I wanted to see how the Coravin would perform in real-world white wine conditions. I chose two reasonably different white wines, both sealed under one-piece natural corks. Both of high quality and semi-aromatic profile. They will be accessed […]

Ah, Coravin. I want to believe, I really do. Convince me. A wonderful opportunity arose here in Germany a month ago: to become an independent tester for Coravin. From all the applicants (a detailed application was required, including how the successful applicant would increase awareness of the Coravin sytem) 32 would be selected. These 32 […]

Steel – Stone – Wood, Round Two! And finally, Round 2 of the tastings of Steel, Stone and Wood from the “Sixpack” from Weingut Andreas Schmitges. If you do not yet know what these wines are all about – or need to refresh your memory – please check out my post on the experiment here, as well […]